It took a desktop computer, a laptop, a cell phone and a land line, but I have finally achieved success. I now hold tickets for the entire family to attend our major league team’s home opener.

Taking the family to Opening Day has been a family tradition since the kids were small. It was a big day to pick them up from school, pack our dinner in a grocery bag and head off to the stadium for fanfare, fireworks and a healthy dose of hope and optimism that this would be the year for our team.

I certainly never thought I was starting a tradition the first time I bought four tickets for the two youngest and my husband and I to go. I just wanted them to experience opening day, the sensory explosion of baseball in all its glory - the scrubbed clean brightness of the ballpark and new uniforms, the smells of hotdogs and stinging smoke from the fireworks, the sound of the buzzing crowd rising to a roar (or a collective groan) when a ball was hit out. So inspiring, so full of excitement.

In a few years they started playing with their own bats, balls and gloves and the annual opening day game became the time for strategizing and looking into the crystal baseball to see what the season would hold. Plays were critiqued and players skills analyzed over polish dogs and cotton candy.

Our little band grew when the two oldest boys returned to the area and didn’t want to miss an opening day. Then came the girlfriends and the boyfriends. And we wouldn’t think of doing anything without them. Which actually turned out quite well since they wound up being my sons and daughters-in-laws.

Then, in 2003, my granddaughter surprised us and entered the world a few weeks ahead of schedule. She attended her first home opener at the age of three weeks, cozy and secure in her own little seat up under the overhang along the first base line. She would eat a churro every inning if I would buy it for her and she starts Tee-ball next month.

The two grandsons are Little League all-stars now and will spend the opening day game conferring with their heads together, reviewing ERAs, on base percentages, RBIs, batting averages and lineups. They will also spend most of the game eating the enormous volumes of food that seem so out of proportion for their grade-school size.

Granddaughter number two turned two last year and must now have her own ticket and her own big girl seat to sit in at opening day. A fact she is very proud of for at least 2 batters in the first inning before she crawls on Grampa’s lap for the rest of the game.

So, this year we are starting our own little subdivision in Section 222 with fourteen of us taking seats across three rows at the home opener. (But I must brag, sixteen will actually be attending - one is due in May and the other in August.)

For us, Opening Day is a day to put on the calendar a year in advance. You make sure you’re in town and you trade shifts or get off work early. It is a day to dress the biggest to the littlest in team colors and tell the kids they can use outside voices for the whole time. It is a day to see if your car really does hold eight people as advertised.

Every year it is harder and harder to find more seats together. And each year is certainly more costly. But this is baseball and baseball is not just a sport, it is a tradition - an American tradition. And like a holiday dinner or celebrating a birthday, our Opening Day tradition is part of the fabric of our family.